CE marking shows a product meets the requirements laid down in the relevant directive. Sometimes this is safety related, sometimes not. Car tyres are not subject to a European Norm but internal tyre standards from the industry. The CE marking on tyres as I understand it relates to these standards and the marking and sizing of tyres.

Products which are approved and certified as safe and later are found to be defective due to production errors or factors not included in the testing are reasonably commonplace, that products can be recalled under the scheme shows its strength as opposed to the US system of having to bring a group action and wait twenty years before a company is forced to admit itīs products were faulty.

The withdrawal of most via-ferrata lanyards recently is a good example of the system functioning, while the lanyards conform in every respect to the requirements recent events showed the requirements themselves were possibly not stringent enough and so approval of that type was rescinded while the standard is reviewed.

You are blurring the distinction between CE and EN which is a mistake. European Norms (EN) are widely integrated into the ISO as are ANSI standards, both being equivelant industrial standards systems. CE marking shows a product conforms to the laws relating to those products in the EU member states. The two are completely different and always will be unless the US is going to start accepting legislation imposed on them by the EU.

I sort of thought that's what I said. ANSI will often adopt ISO standards and vice-versa, at least they did when I sat on committees.

AFAIK, there is no certification anywhere that says something is safe. Am I wrong?

We have ANSI and EN Norms to say they meet standards as to physical characteristics, but based on spot testing, then we've got the whole ISO 9000 thing for manufacturing processes, even though that basically just certifies that you've got a document.

Is "safety" even a concept amenable to the kind of detailed specification required by a norm?

These are questions. You seem to be closer to the process than I am any more.

Products which are approved and certified as safe and later are found to be defective due to production errors or factors not included in the testing are reasonably commonplace, that products can be recalled under the scheme shows its strength as opposed to the US system of having to bring a group action and wait twenty years before a company is forced to admit itīs products were faulty.

That's not exactly a good description of what happens in the US. The CPSC and a couple of other agencies in the US can remove products from the market. There are recent examples with childrens merchandise, toys and food. Most often, manufacturers, having been alerted in some way (often by being sued by someone claiming damage) voluntarily withdraw product. There are lots of recent examples in the automotive business.

We do have a tort system to handle damages and that's what class actions are generally about when an identifiable class of people has suffered damages. An individual still has the tort system available to claim recompense. It's certainly not the default way of handling things deemed to be unsafe.

I would love to hear about systems for determining safety in Europe and how safety is defined in a detailed enough way to write legislation. Can you point me to a reference?

You probably know this anyway but ISO standards are international and in Europe we adopt them when required into the EN system. We can either use the ISO standard or more likely the adopted one which is then labelled ISO EN ..... (there are certain advantages in using the EN version, it will be in our language for a start). The European Norms on the other hand are Europe specific and not adopted by ISO. There is discussion on the integration of ENīs into the ISO but this is at an early stage and may or may not occur, probably not in this or the next decade! For the climbing standards you have to use the EN system as there are no standards under ISO, in their catalogue there is a category for mountaineering equipment (97.220.40) but no standards are available or published.

To obtain the CE mark the product must satisfy the requirements of the relevant directive, if these include one or more ENs then naturally enough these have to be conformed to.

There is no certification available in the world that says something is "safe", only that it is as safe as practicable, an airplane has a certificate of airworthyness but the only 100% guarantee of this is when it lands again.

The ISO 9000 family are a paper-trail quality management system, you also have to show you have an effective quality control system in place to use the CE mark (if you use an approved outside body to audit this then their code is written after the CE symbol).

Since the ENs are in general product standards safety is fairly easy to write into the system, both by looking at the theory (for climbing gear this is using the "safety chain" concept where the dynamic rope defines the forces applied on the rest of the equipment), by historic events (we see what has broken before) or by common sense (we look at something and say "you must be joking"). For climbing gear the two problem areas not covered are human intervention (so there is no EN for belay devices since to function they require human input) and durability. The durability issue is left up to the manufacturer but is under some review, it is understandably going to be very difficult to make a realistic standard to cover this especially with soft goods.

The two commonest exemptions from CE marking in climbing equipment are:- Belay devices as without human intervention they perform no function and their performance is dependent on the operators performance. Some devices carry the CE mark such as the GriGri but this shows the notified body which oversees their QC system. Bolts must conform to the relevant EN (959) but may not be CE marked as they are not `personalī protective equipment.

I sat on ANSI committees for computer graphics years ago, and our goal was always incorporation of our standards into ISO. Our concern was interoperability rather than life safety. I haven't been involved with standards for a while except for a couple of ISO 9000 certs.

Here in the US, we have NFPA for certain types of equipment and the Latin American governments that I sell to are starting to specify it more and more, but they'll generally be satisfied with CE. The military equipment I sell is tested by shipment and a test cert is issued with every shipment.

Military equipment is exempt from CE over here, partly because they have their own standards and because it isnīt sold on the open market (and their needs are often very different). There was some discussion a few years ago about selling military surplus without marking but Iīve no idea what happened about that!

We sell outdoor and safety equipment related to fall protection (think climbing) and rescue all over Latin America. There are lots of military uses for the same stuff for mountain troops, helo ops, etc.

The military stuff I was talking about is steel carabiners, static rope & such that's available in the civilian market. I've actually seen the US military demand the CE mark. Individual unit commanders can go to a store and buy things for their units (up to a certain amount).

The US military has given up publishing their own standards for a lot of stuff. For parachute gear, for instance, they depend on standards issued by the parachute industry association. The separate MILSPEC standards they used to use are slowly disappearing, even though you still see references.

In response to how many to get... As a beginning leader, you'll probably place more gear than you will after you get your confidence level up. Shoot for every 6 feet if your sketching. It also depends on what your climbing. 5.4 flatirons I shoot for every 30 ft, but sometimes don't get one for 80 ft. You also have to figure what size your going to end up climbing the most. If you intend to stay on hand sized parallel splitters at indian creek, you'll need a whole bunch of the same size range. I like BD cams, so I have .3 through 4 in C4's and doubles from .4 to 3. Plus 0, 00, and 000 C3's. Usually only carry the 0 C3. Sometimes cary a full range of BD nuts plus two or three larger hexes to extend the range.

I placed toprope anchors at Devil's lake in Wisco for 2 years before buying cams and starting to lead trad.